


Dragon Hearts

by andtheblueberrymuffins



Series: zutara2016 [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Dragons, F/M, Gen, Pre-Relationship, Slow Build, for zutara week 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-09 00:09:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7779004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andtheblueberrymuffins/pseuds/andtheblueberrymuffins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war is over, splitting the group up and sending them looking for new ways to occupy their time, until Zuko shows up in a hurry, desperate for Katara's aid as a healer, though she's never faced a challenge quite like this one before....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dragon Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> For the dragons prompt, meant to get this posted over here yesterday and I forgot. Decided to do Zutara Week for the first time this year and got a shiny account for it. Part one of a slow-burning series that ignores everything post-AtLA.

Katara sat with her feet in the shallow pool, healing the blisters caused by a long day helping with the rebuilding of Earth Kingdom village they’d worked their way to, when she heard the first excited exclamations about a Fire Nation airship approaching. She tensed at first – there had been pockets of soldiers who didn’t hear about the end of the war, or who didn’t want to believe it – and several of them had come looking for members of their group already, but Sokka gleefully, and loudly, identified it, yelling, “Oh man, on man, that’s Zuko’s airship. Toph, do you think that’s him, up there on deck?”

“Looks like it to me,” Toph scoffed back, and Katara rolled her eyes, pushing her feet deeper into the water before standing and bending them dry. It had been weeks since all of them had been together, between one thing and another. Zuko had a country to run, after all, and Aang had Avatar stuff to attend to, but with the war ended the rest of them had found their schedules curiously light. Suki had suggested they help with the rebuilding effort and that had seemed a better way to use their time than most.

It meant satisfying work, long hours, and lots of blisters. It also meant a separation of their group, with Zuko staying in the Fire Nation and Aang popping in and out of their orbit at any given moment. He’d only arrived by in the village the night before, stopping by Katara’s tent and lingering for a long time while she watched his shadow, before he hurried away without knocking.   
She had to admit that perhaps some of his recent distance could be thanks to the incredibly awkward conversation they’d had, in the weeks following the end of the war, where she’d tried to find the words to explain how she felt about him. She didn’t like remembering his expression when she’d blurted the phrase, “Like my brother,” but it was what it was.

At least he hadn’t gone to the Avatar State.

And now they’d all be together again, just like old times. She bent and grabbed her shoes with a spring in her step, hurrying towards the front of the village as Aang enthused, “Hey, sifu hotman, that is one nice—”

“I need to see Katara,” Zuko interrupted, abrupt if not cruel, and something small and treacherous in Katara’s chest turned over. He sounded like she remembered, ember warm, which, of course he did. It had only been a couple of months, but then, Aang’s voice had started to crack, prompting Sokka to make a single terrible joke about Katara jump-starting his puberty, and—

“Uh, she’s—”

“Here I am,” Katara spoke for herself, stepping onto the main thoroughfare and getting her first good look at Zuko. He looked taller, too, and broader across the shoulders; they were all getting more regular meals, these days. He also looked tired, with dark circles under his eyes, his hair tangled around his face, and his robes out of order. His entire expression shifted with relief when he spotted her, transformed, and her stomach fluttered, just a little.

“Great, good. It’s good to see you,” he said, striding forward and taking her arm before he finally seemed to notice the rest of the group had gathered to greet him. “It’s good to see all of you, I mean, really, but, uh, I actually have to go. Again. Right now.” He turned back to Katara and his expression fell grim again. “I need you to come with me. It’s very important and I’ll explain on the way, I promise.”

“Uh.” Katara glanced over towards Sokka, but he looked just as confused as he always did. She avoided glancing at Aang. “Okay. Of course.”  
Zuko sagged for just a moment, as though a weight had fallen suddenly off of his back. He squeezed her wrist and breathed, “Thank you,” before tugging her back towards the shoreline and his airship.

Aang jumped after them, easily keeping pace despite Zuko’s longer legs and hurried stride. “What’s going on? Do you want to take Appa? He could carry us all?”

“There’s no time,” Zuko said and shook his head sharply, speeding up more until they were all but running down the street.

“Hey,” Aang protested, “Appa is faster than—”

“Appa needs to sleep,” Zuko called and then they were at the airship, a small one, apparently empty except for them. Zuko fed heat into the furnace immediately as Aang leapt up and perched on the side of the ship. “And we don’t have time for that. You can follow us, though.”

Aang looked between them, frowning and twirling his new staff around. “Where are you going?”  
Zuko’s flame edged hotter, into white. “The Sun Warrior ruins.”  
#

The Earth Kingdom village grew tiny in the distance as the airship carried them up and out over the ocean. Katara watched it fall away, imagined the gang scrambling to get packed and onto Appa’s back, and then picked her way over to sit beside Zuko at the helm. He looked strung tight and a deep scowl dug at the corners of his mouth. She twisted back and forth for a moment and then asked, “So… why exactly are we going to the Sun Warrior ruins? That’s where you and Aang met the dragons, right? What’s going on there?”

Zuko grimaced, his gaze still locked on the horizon. “You know not everyone in the Fire Nation is happy about the war being over.”

Katara snorted, “I’ll say.” He winced, guilt passing across his expression, and Katara reached out and touched his arm. “Hey. I know you are. Everyone else will get there. We just need to show them how things are better this way.”

He sighed, unconvinced. “Yeah. Maybe. Well, some of the people that aren’t happy formed a group. They broke away. I didn’t know where they were going until it was too late.”

“They went to the ruins? Didn’t the traps get them?”

“Not all of them, I guess.” Zuko shrugged. “Figures. The Sun Warriors fought them, but there were a lot. One of them spotted the dragons. They’d brought some kind of siege weapon, I’m not sure what, I keep getting conflicting reports and—”

“Zuko,” Katara touched his elbow and he blinked rapidly, reaching up to scrub a hand across his face. So someone had gone to the ruins, and they’d attacked a dragon, and Zuko had come looking specifically for her. Katara swallowed heavily. “How badly is it hurt?”

“I don’t know,” Zuko admitted, sagging down. “Bad, that’s what I’ve been told. And I know you’ve never healed a dragon, but you’re the best healer I know. If anyone can help….” He looked across at her, his eyes tired and frightened and hopeful in equal measure. He finished, weakly, “There are only two of them left.”

“Then we’ll do everything we can to keep it that way,” she promised, easily, though the logistics of trying to heal such a huge creature seemed impossible to fathom. She had a try. She had to succeed. That was all there was to it.

Zuko smiled for just a second, some of the strain lifting from his expression. “Thanks, Katara.” He adjusted their course slightly. “I knew I could count on you.”

#

The trip passed in a blur, Katara passing the time trying to practice, drawing her water out and playing it between her fingers over and over again. Zuko’s scar kept catching her attention, reminding her of the failed attempt to heal it so long ago in Ba Sing Se. It looked less angry now, than it had then. Or maybe that was a trick of the light.

They landed in the darkness before dawn, Zuko barely securing the ship before he led her off. The ruins were beautiful, but she barely had time to glimpse them before he brought her to a giant open area with a tremendous set of stairs leading up to a precarious walkway, all reflecting gold wherever the light touched them. It was amazing, but it paled in comparison to the great dragon curled up on the ground, its massive chest barely rising and falling.

A second dragon – red to the other’s blue – stirred as they approached, flames curling in its open mouth before Zuko raised his hand and called out, “No! We’re not here to hurt you. We’re here to help. She’s a waterbender, do you understand? She’s a healer. She can – she can fix this.”  
For a moment, Katara believed the dragon would ignore Zuko and incinerate them anyway, but then it settled back onto its haunches, standing guard over its wounded mate.

Katara ducked around Zuko, running towards the dragon, worried that she would already be too late. They’d struck a grievous wound into its side, the edges open and torn, blood slowly pumping out over ragged scales. Katara dropped to her knees, uncorking her water and asking, “Does it go all the way through?”

“Well?” Zuko demanded of someone, over her head.

“Yes, waterbender,” a voice she didn’t recognize replied. She glanced up and realized that a giant crowd surrounded them, the group completely ringing the courtyard, looking just as exhausted as Zuko.

Katara’s stomach turned over, but she’d dealt with terrible injuries before. She’d healed Zuko when Azula’s lightning cooked him from the inside. She’d brought Aang back, that terrible night on Appa’s back, when she’d held him on her shoulder and his chest hadn’t risen and fallen. “Alright,” she breathed out, coating her hands in water and stretching them out. “Okay, I can do this.” She spared a quick look up at Zuko. “But I’m going to need more water.”

#

Hours passed as Katara tried to knit the great beast back together once more. Sweat beaded up on her brow and ran down the sides of her face. Exhaustion stung the backs of her eyes and strain made her fingers tremble. She heard Sokka’s voice, eventually, but they must have kept the others back. None of them would have been useful, at the moment, even Aang had never managed to learn any healing.

The work went slow and bitter. Katara hummed as she went, coaxing muscles and blood vessels back together, mending bones, convincing the torn flesh that it should once again be whole. Her back ached and a headache spread from the base of her skull forward. But she saw progress, slow and dearly bought, but there. The wound closed, inch by precious inch.

And through it all, Zuko stood by her shoulder, or paced around, though she was barely aware of him, only noticing when he bent to mop the sweat from her brow or to force her to take a swallow of sweet water, or to shove a piece of bread into her mouth. He still waited with her as she smoothed her hands over the dragon’s regrown scales, checking to make sure she’d put everything to right. The scales were warm under her hands, full of life, and she startled when the dragon shifting, arching up off of the ground.

It looked brilliant in the day, sunlight glittering off of its scales as its mate wrapped around it, the two concerned with nothing but one another for a moment. Katara stared at them, gaping, until Zuko offered her a hand. Her legs protested when he pulled her to her feet and she swayed into him, for just a moment, blushing at her weakness, not the closeness, of course. And then the dragon turned, spinning down through the air to lower its massive head right in front of her, so close that for a moment all she saw was a gigantic nose.

“Oh,” she blurted, “uh. Hi?”

The dragon exhaled, warm air that curled around her skin and blew her back a step before Zuko steadied her. The dragon moved forward, just enough to brush its nose against her stomach, and then it drew backwards and shot up into the air, spiraling with its mate while Katara gaped at the gorgeous spectacle of it.

“Oh, yeah!” Sokka yelled from somewhere behind them, disturbing the moment utterly and making Katara suddenly aware of the press of her shoulder against Zuko’s chest. “Look at that! Did you see that dragon? That dragon was saved by the Water Tribe!”

“That dragon was saved by your sister,” Toph corrected, and Katara shook herself, stepping away just enough to put a bit of space between them.

“Yeah, with her freaky water magic,” Katara called, turning to move over and join them, though her knees wobbled a bit.

“Whatever.” Sokka waved a hand, dismissing all concerns. “You know I love your freaky water magic. So, these are the ruins, huh? Well, oh great Firelord of lordy greatness,” and there he bowed outrageously before throwing an arm around Zuko’s shoulders, “are you going to show us around, or what?”

#

In the end, the Sun Warriors showed them around, offering them a tour filled with historical information that Sokka gobbled up and then a feast that sent him into paroxysms of joy. Katara overheard Aang saying, “They’re being way nicer to us this time,” as she passed his spot at the table, led further on by one of the younger warriors, who had spent a lot of time guiding them around.

“Well, yeah,” Toph said, around a mouthful of food, “you guys didn’t exactly save their dragon’s life last time, did you?”

They’d passed too far for her to hear Aang’s reply and just far enough for her to realize that they intended to seat her at the head of the long table. “Oh, no,” she started, feeling a nervous smile stretching across her face, “that’s really not, I mean, did you know,” she craned around and pointed back at Aang, “he’s the Avatar, and Zuko—” where had Zuko gone? – “he’s the—”

“This chair is for you,” the young man said firmly and pulled it out for her. A lot of beaming, expectant faces around her confirmed that this was how it was going to be. And would it be so bad, really, to sit at the front of the table for one meal? No, it wouldn’t. And anyway, she’d worked really hard.

So she sat, and she didn’t protest too much when people placed food on her plate, and she smiled at Zuko when they led him over and sat him to her right. He didn’t look nearly as tired, though she couldn’t recall him getting the chance to sleep. He smiled back at her and they ate food so spicy it made her nose run, drank dark, sweet juice that made her head feel light, and when the warriors pulled out the drums and started playing them, they all got up to dance, laughter filling up Katara’s chest.

She let Sokka twirl her around, skillfully evading his too-big feet, before he spun her like a top, right into Aang. For a moment she held his waist and he rested his hands on her shoulders and she realized they were of a height and she saw him blush. She tried to imagine, once more, if she could just feel something for him, the way he wanted, but the love she felt for him was cast in the same mold as the affection she had for Sokka, deep and strong but nothing other than familial.

She looked to the side – far enough to catch Sokka trying to coax Toph into moving with the beat – and then sure hands swept her aside and spun her into movement. Her feet found the steps easily enough, and she laughed, jumping and twirling with her partner, only recognizing him after a moment as the warrior who guided them earlier. He smiled at her and she noticed that his smile was very nice, his eyes golden, just like….

Her gaze slipped to the crowd, just like that. She found Zuko standing by the edge, watching the dancers, and she ducked away from her partner, calling a careless thanks for the dance over her shoulder. “What’s up?” She asked, stumbling out of the crowd beside Zuko and snagging the cup he held, chugging it down. More of the bubbly juice. She handed it back empty and he raised his eyebrows at the bottom of the cup. She nudged him in the side. “I thought princes, like, trained to dance, or whatever.”

He looked at her sideways and then shrugged, bringing a hand up to rub at the back of his neck. “Not really these kinds of dances.”

She laughed, imagining him dressed up in formal Fire Nation attire, dancing some kind of strict waltz. It got funnier the longer she thought about it. “Well,” she said, taking his cup away again and placing it on the table this time. “Luckily, it isn’t hard to learn the steps. Come on.”

“What?” His eyes went delightfully wide. “No, that’s—”

“Don’t worry,” she reassured him, arranging his hands, one on her hip, one in her hand, judging the placement and deeming it close enough. “I’ll lead.”

And they swept into the crowd, bumping knees and toes, pulling the wrong way, out of synch with one another for a moment before Zuko caught the beat and something clicked. They wove around the circle of dancers, the drums echoing in Katara’s bones, and when she threw her head back, sometime later, exalting in the movement and the thrum of the music, she saw the dragons, circling overhead, twining around and around and around each other. And she moved a little closer to Zuko, not because she was tired or dizzy, but because her heart leapt and she wanted to.

And he stretched out his hand across her back, and held her there.


End file.
